An imagined Havana (since I haven’t been there…yet!) You can see a pop-up of salsa dancers, a card-game between fruit-sellers on the street, the “classic” cars, and some architectural features of the buildings which I’ve noticed in pictures of old Havana. Havana is a city difficult to capture in black-and-white because one of its distinctive…
Tag: drawing
Sketch of a Chickadee
Black-capped chickadees are songbirds living in the forests and woodlands of Northeastern America. They famously hide small quantities of food in distributed locations in their environment. Remarkably, memory for these “cache sites” can persist for around 28 days (Hitchcock and Sherry 1990). (Would you remember where your keys were after weeks of hiding them? What…
Sketch of a magnetically sensitive life-form (a European robin)
The Earth’s magnetic field is something we humans take little notice of on a daily basis. Although we can perform experiments and build machines that detect magnetic fields, our bodies have no intrinsic “magnetic sense.” This is not the case for many animal species, who perceive and rely on the Earth’s magnetic field in navigation….
Why study (or draw) a fruit fly?
A few years ago, I had never imagined that I would spend several hours of my winter holidays sketching the central nervous system and muscle plan of a fruit fly. Perhaps you feel share the same thought—why would anyone looking for artistic inspiration turn to the fruit fly? If you want to showcase an animal subject, it may…
Stargazing—a wonder from science and art
“All other animals look downward; Man, Alone, erect, can raise his face towards Heaven.” – Ovid, Metamorphoses —“The Creation” Ovid was a Roman poet who wrote one masterpiece of a text called the Metamorphoses. You may also recognize this title because Franz Kafka, a German author, wrote a similar sounding work called the Metamorphosis. (Although the themes explored…
Sketch of three birds on a branch
This is the finished version of a sketch of birds I started some weeks ago, showing three songbirds perched together on a tree branch. The leftmost bird is a blue winged warbler, the middle is a zebra finch, and the rightmost is of an imaginary design. (I am sure that in the diversity of birds, this particular…
Neuroscience and birds
Neuroscience can introduce you to an abundance of exciting thoughts. Obviously, most of these thoughts will involve the brain and how it works. But because of the interdisciplinary nature of neuroscience (that is, how the brain can be studied from levels ranging from molecular genetics all the way to human social interactions), you get to learn a lot about…
the neuroscientist…
…has her own way of introspection. This sketch shows a human but only in terms of her nervous system. This includes the spinal cord, nerves, and the brain. On the table and sitting in a dissection plate is a preserved brain, which seems to capture this human’s curiosity. A small telescope rests on the table near the brain. For what…
Neuronal landscape
A rough sketch I came up with during my philosophy class…perhaps you recognize some landscape shapes in the mesh of neuronal branches?
The Quantum Thought 